I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Review (Spry Fox). I am aware of the irony of me calling it a quick review when I’m on the fourth part, but it’s funny (at least to me). Plus, the new season started today so let’s goooooo with new items! The game was released on July 15th, and the new season (fall) started on September 1. That makes me wonder if they shortened the seasons in this game (again, in the first game, a season was two months with a month between two seasons) or if it’s just because of when the game was released. My hunch is that it was the latter, but we’ll see when the next season starts.
I really like the start of a new season because it means a ton of new resources. New critters (bugs, insects, and butterflies), new trees and flowers, new seashells, and new fish. I had not gotten anything new in a while. The thrill of seeing that ‘new’ in the deescription in bold black ink really perked me up just when I’ve been dragging my ass in the game.
It’s the same as it was in the last game, yes (new resources at the change of seasons) except they cut out the in-between month this time. Again, we’ll see if that’s just because of the release date or if they choose to cut the seasons short. I think it’s the former because they like to have things link up with the real world. Which, again, I appreciate for the most part.
Back to all the delicous new resources in a new season. If this game holds true to the first game, this means I’ll get new bears and new recipes, too. I’m not sure about the latter because the specificity of an ingredient doesn’t matter. What I mean by that is you don’t make anything with, say a blueberry. It’ll use fruit jam, wnhich you make by burning the fruits. Same with nuts. No recipe will ever ask for a pecan, for example. It’ll just need nut flour, which you get from burning the nuts.
I actually like this because it makes the cooking fairly simple. I just have to gather all the resources and burn the ones that can be born. Easy-peasy. I don’t like how intensive some of the master recipes are (highest tier), but that’s not unexpected.
I do think if someone has not played the first game, this is a fine place to start. But, I also think overall the first game is better.
Here’s the thing with sequels. They are in a Catch-22 because they need to have the same charm as the original to appease the fans, but they also need enough new and fresh ideas in order to expand that appeal. I saw it happen with Dark Souls II (FromSoft) (which was a good game, even if ti wasn’t a good Souls game, per se), and I have seen it with other games, too. I liked Torchlight (Runic Games) better than Torchlight II, and I liked Hades (Supregiant Games) better than Hades II. Dark Souls is a more original game than the successor, obviously, but is it better? I would say the first half is, but not the second half.
All of that is to say that so far, I would say that I prefer OG Cozy Grove to the sequel. It was so fresh with its real-time gameplay, and I really gelled with the format. I couldn’t wait to play every day and to learn more about the bears. Even the excessive resource gathering (and the tiny inventory space). I only started getting frustrated when I went for the plat, which had some truly egregious achievements. So far, this game has tedious ones, but not any that are terrible. There are four locked achievements, though, which means that I’ll hold out as long as I can before giving in and looking them up.
Side note: I don’t really like hidden/locked achievements, though I understand why it evolved for them to be a thing. It’s because they are related to the story, and the devs want the players to be able to have those moments organically. At some point, though, I start worrying that I’ve missed an achievement–which means I will usually look up the full list before I get too far in a game.
FromSoft games have scarred me in this respect. I like to experience them unspoiled as much as possible, but I also don’t want to miss out on NPC questlines. Which are byzantine, obtuse, and really difficult to figure out without a guide–at least fgor me. But if I look up an NPC questline, I will get spoiled on other questlines. That’s just how it works.
It’s the same for locked achievements. I will hold out as long as possible, but at a certain point, I will give in. Otherwise, I’ll hit the achievements and get mad at how I wasted time by not looking them up earlier. That happened in Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock) with a very specific achievement that meant I had to play the whole game again just to get it. Well, not all of it, but a good chunk of it. Which infuriated me and left a sourr taste in my mouth. I still loved the game, but my enthusiasm for it was very subduued by the end of the plat run.
I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). This is the second part of A Quick Review, and we’ll see how many posts I write about it. I have a lot to say, so strap in and let’s go.
In the first post, I voiced some of my frustrations at the way the game deals with inventory and resource management. It’s similar if not exactly the same as the first game, and it frustrated me then, too. I detailed how the upgrades work, and it’s tedious AF. As I said in the first post, give me a permanent upgrade to an unlimited inventory. Make it astronomical like a million coins, but just do it. I hate having to go back to the fire (Flamey) to endlessly stash things, usually after burning them. (That upgrades a lot of the items to a higher tier.)
Also, and, yes, this was also something that happened in the first game–the placement of items is so frustrating. It starts with being hard to click on the item or the NPC if the NPC is near lots of items. And, given how limited space is, most of the NPCs are near a lot of items*.
I said yesterday that the cooking machine was the same as in the first game. That is not quite true. In the first game, you had to talk to an NPC bear in order to cook things. This is much easier, and I appreciate that I can just go to the cooking machine to make what I need/want. That’s a definite upgrade from the first game.
Let’s take a minute to give praise to the changes that I appreciate. One, there are ghosts/apparyitions of your troop members (who are also lost somewhere like you) that show up to help you farm resources. They help with the same chores you have to do anyway, but if they help you, you get a ton more resources. I like that.
I also like some of the different things that you can turn your basic resources into via fire or recycling. In fact, I wished they had done more in this vein.
One thing I’m very curious about is…hm. How do I put this so that it’s not spoiler-ific? There is a mystery that started at a certain point of me doing one of the new things. Which I’m not going to say exactly what it is because it’s very different and unexpected. After doing it for several days (like weeks), I got a letter in the mailbox admiring my work. And encouraging me to do more. Which, despite my misgivings, I did. And I got another letter commending me for what I was doing. And I felt even worse about it. They said they’d send me another letter soon, but I have yet to hear from them.
I have played Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) every day since it came out on Steam (July 15th). I have enough time with it to review it in A (not-so) Quick Review.
First of all, let’s talk about how it feels. It’s very much in the same vein as the first game, which means it feels very familiar. I have a routine set up that I started in the first game, and it serves me well, here, too.
I wake up and got to Mr. Kit, the main merchant in the game.
Note about Mr. Kit: I really wanted to learn more about him in th efirst game, but that did not happen. I am not holding out much hope that we’ll get more in this game because nothing is pointing that way, but it would be nice. He just appears out of nowhere selling ihs wares, and I’m supposed to trust that he has my best interests at heart?
Well, I do, actually. I just want to learn more about him for his sake. Meaning, I find him an interesting character aand would like to know more about his background. Was he a scout once? Does he have a family? Why is he on the campground selling his expensive wares? I assume because he’s a big fox that he’s meant to represent the company?
I sell all the stuff that I can. I have around three hundo (thou) right now, and I’m trying to save up to expand the store for the third time. I think that’s 450,000 monies, which is a lot. I’m getting there, but there are other things that I want to buy, too. In fact, that’s what I do when I got to Mr. Kit’s store. He sells clothing, and I like to see what I want to buy. One of the issues, though, is that they have expanded the clothing–but….I’ll get to that later.
After I viisit Mr. Kit’s store, I go to the cooking machine and make all the foods I need to feed my animals. This is also the same as in the first game. The animals need to eat so they can level up and give me better rewards. The thing is, though, it can get overwhelming to see that I need to make seven to ten dishes, especially if I don’t have the ingredients for some of them. There are different level to the cooked foods, and when you get to the higher tier, it takes so many resources to make a dish once.
The problem is that it quickly feels like a burden to do the daily chores. This was the same in the first game, and it carries on to this game. One of the biggest issues is the item-carrying capacity, and the storage space capacity. This was also a problem in the first game, and a top-five issue.
You start with something like twenty-five or thirty spaces in your backpack. I’m not even sure it’s that many. You can buy another four spaces for…I want to say it’s 200,000 monies. Ok. I just looked it up, and it’s way more complicated than that. The first extra four slots are 4,000 monies. Then, you have upgrade the store (which, as I said is pretty pricy). With each upgrade of the store, you can buy one more packet of +4 slots, but it goes up exponentially each time.
(And other indies). That’s the subtitle, but I didn’t want to make the actual title too long.
I have one thing I need to say right away. Get rid of limited inventories. Completely. In the year of our largess, 2026, there is no reason for a limited inventory. When I played Skyrim (Bethesda), I only installed one mod. Well, two. One was to add snow because I love snow. But the other more important one was the infinite inventory for the horse. You can bet I downloaded that mod tout de suite.
If I remember, that game was especially egregious. It’s a vast open world game, and you could only dump your stuff at one of your houses? I think? And the fast travel was limited. I felt like I could only go two steps before filling up my inventory. Oh, and you could loot everything in every house.
Once I installed the endless inventory horse mod (you just dumped everything into your horse), it made the game 100% more enjoyable. I didn’t have to worry about picknig things up and where I was going to put them.
In Coze Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), the inventory is so limited when you start out. So is the storagce in your tent/the fire. This is the same as the first game, and it was just as annoying then. There is no reason for it. I mean, I get that there’s an emotional reason for it, but all it does in make me irritated/mad/upset. Oh, and here’s the post from yesterday in which I explored my mixed feelings about the game.
I do wonder if it’s just that it’s easier to code that way than to make it endless? I don’t know why that would be, but jI know roughly nothing about coding. I will say that in this game, my motivation dwindles and dives when it seems like every three seconds I have to stop and move things into my storage or sell a bunch of stuff.
In the first game, at some point when I was rolling in money, I could max out my storage and buy chests to plac e them around the island. That was a stop-gap solution that I didn’t like because I never knew what was in which chest. I think you could access items from the main chest from any of the chests if you already had them in the main chest (the storage at the fire).
It was a mess, though. I really was hoping it would be one of the things that would be improved for this game. Alas, it was not. As far as i can tell, it’s exactly the same. A frustratingly small inventory that fills up in about five minutes. At least you can stack the same items, but only up to a certain amount of them.
It really disturbs the flow when I have to stop every five minutes or so to sell off a bunch of stuff or stash a bunch of items. Another small gripe is that when you run out of space, you simply cannot pick up the new item–so it lays on the ground where it is. And there is no marker to let me know where that is. I have in the past not been able to find something that I could not put in my inventory. It’s not a big deal when it’s a common resource, but if it’s one of the spirit logs (the reward a bear gives to you when you finish a quest for them. You give it to Flamey to make him stronger), then, of course, I want to find it again.
I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). In my post from yesterday, I was reluctantly admitting that I wanted something more from the game that I wasn’t getting. I compared the game to a favorite hoodie in that it fit well and was comfy to be in as you lounged around the house, but it wasn’t a looker nor was it something you’d go to, say, work in. It’s the same hoodie you’ve worn for the past ten years, and it’s just something you hold onto no matter what.
And yet, you know you should throw it away at some point soon, but your heart screams at you not to do so. So you ignore that voice and keep on wearing it–taking care to wash it gently to slow down the wear and tear.
I think I’ve pushed that metaphor about as far as I can without breaking it. My point is that I have been playing with a lingering sesse of, “Is this it?” Everything that was in the last game was in this one as well. The bears you have to help. The resources you have to forage. Mr. Kit’s store and its ever-expanding inventory. There were a few differences, but I wasn’t that happy about it, one in particular.
It’s the one where when you do the repeated chores like mining ore, you see the corporeal forms of your fellow Spirit Scouts as they help you do the chore. I hope there’s a reason for it that will be uncovered later because right now, I find it quite pointless. Doing those chores don’t take much time individually–it’s more the sum of doing them all. And having a helper on one of, say, six chores doesn’t really help. If it were every time, maybe? But doing it this way just irritates me.
One thing from the last game that is in this game as well that I really like is Mr. Kit’s daily array of clothing and hairstyles. They change on the daily, and I try to buy…well, in the last game, I just bought them all. In this game, though, I’m buying the ones I like–and all the special ones whether I like them or not.
As I was playing today, I still had that small feeling of, “Is this all there is?” It’s weird because I was enjoying my time (comfort food), but at the same time, I wanted something new. Oh! One more QOL change that I really appreciated is how they deal with the food. In the first game, there was a baker bear (who I really liked, by the way) who was actually really terrible at cooking/baking. I found that highly amusing, and I liked talking to her. I will admit, though, at a certain point, I just wanted to get on with my cooking and baking.
I’ve finished the next day in Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), and I want to talk about it, and here is my post from yesterday that talks about it somewhat, but also about series in general. More specifically, how I think series go on for too long.
I want to talk about how sequels are in a no-win situation. I’ll start with Dark Souls II. It was destined to fail, really, because–hey, wait. I just did a quick Google, and while I can’t get an exact number for how many copies of Dark Souls II were sold, it’s at least several million (inclidng Scholar of the First Sin).
But, for many hardcore FromSoft fans, it’s the game not to be named. I, myself, enjoyed it a great deal as long as I didn’t think of it as a Dark Souls game, really, and I’ve certainly played it many more times than I’ve played the first game. It hasn’t aged the best, but I still go back to play it every now and again.
My point is that it’s really hard to make a sequel that pleases the people who love the first game. Why? Because it’s a no-win situation. If you stick too closely to the first game, then people are dissatisfied beacuse you’re not innovating (especially since the first game* was so different that the other games of that time), but if you change it too much, then people don’t like that it’s not like the first game.
This game is like my favorite hoodie that I wear constantly around the house. It’s worn in to fit my body, and it’s super comfortable. There are holes, yes, but I pay them no mind because they’re not showing anything inappropriate.
I really like wandering around and picking up resources all over the place. I can get lost in the little things, which is the joy of this game. I have to be careful, though, because it can become a burden if I allow myself to be dragged down by every little thing.
I think the point of giving the player so many things to do is to let the player pick and choose what they want to do. You’re not meant to do everything all at once, but that’s how my brain works. I want to do it all, and I want to do it all now. I am not good at delayed gratification, and I never have been. I mean, I can do it if I have rewards and such, but just for the sake of it? No.
I like the characters I’ve met so far–even the snooty one who speaks very formally. However, I don’t feel the pull towards any of them that I did in the first game. It’s early days, though, so I’m comfortable with waiting.
I’ve played the second day of Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), and I have much to say about it. (The first day was the demo.) It has retained the “you’ve done all you can do” message from Flamey, which I appreciate. Of course, I can still wander around, pick things up, and turn things in to the, ah, archive thing to make money. I’ll explain that in a bit. Here is my post from yesterday in which I wrote about how much I was looking forward to this game and to The Incident at Galley House (William Rous, Evil Trout Inc.).
I did mention, though, that my emotions were mixed about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit. I played the first part of it when Netflix was trying out its beta gaming desktop, and I played the demo of it when they broke free from the Netflix shackles and could put the game on Steam. The demo is the first day, much like what I played on Netflix.
Side note: I want to do my mini-rant about sequels. For games in this case, but just in general, too. Quick side note to the side note: series should go to about seven units. I’ve had a firm belief about this since I was in my twenties. I’ve seen too many writers feeling like they have to milk their main protagonist for all they’re worth. I don’t blame them, obviously, because you gotta get paid, but….
Let me give you an example. I used to read Sue Grafton’s alphabet series (starring Kinsey Millhone) voraciously. I really liked it when it first came out. However, M was the turning point as it was the last one I enjoyed. Part of the problem was that she set the books so that each one followed the last, timewise. Meaning there was only a few weeks between each book in the books whereas they came out every year or two? I think? That means that even when the actual years went into the internet era, Kinsey was still using a brick phone that did little more than just receive calls.
It got tiring after a while, and it really felt constraining. Plus, the problem is that when you have a really popular protagonist, you can’t mess with them too much. Every book, Kinsey had to say that she cut her own hair and that her landlord is an eighty-year old hottie. I know she had to set up each book in the same way, but it got really old by the time I hit N.
Back to Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit.
The second day took about an hour to finish. I appreciate that it doesn’t take a huge amount of time, but I did feel a bit overwhelmed by all the different quests I were given. I don’t know if I’m remembering this inorrectly, but I felt that quests went much more slowly in the first game, and I wasn’t given as many on the daily.
There was a pacing issue in the first game where the grind seemed too real, and things took too long to do. Again, I appreciated the real-time pacing. I liked being made to wait until the next in-real-life day to continue a quest. However, the economy was a bit too stingy in the beginning. It was too hard to get the things you needed in the first few weeks. I remember looking to the forums when I couldn’t get an ingredient I needed and found out that it was hard to get. I felt like I was barely scraping together enough money to buy what I needed.
By the middle of the game, I was positively rolling in it. I had no need to worry about money, and I could buy whatever I needed. I much prefer that to scraping by, but I wish there was more of a balance between the two. I know it’s a hard balance to get, though, so I’m not going to be too put out by it.
Also, in this game, there’s less of that friction. That’s a word (friction) I kept using in the last post, but I can’t help it. It’s something that games struggle so much with, and it tends to swing from one extreme to the other. FromSoft happened at a time when games were made to be as easy as possible so gamers didn’t ever have to feel like they were failing.
Miyazaki said, “Yeah, no.” Not consciously, maybe*, but he gave no quarters. And that started the era of games being brutal for the sake of being brutal.**
I think this game suffered from the same criticism–well, at least a similar one. Not that it was considered difficult, but you did have to have patience to play it. I know that I might be hanging too much importance on the fact that the changes happened after they got bought out by Netflix, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
By the way. Mad props to the two founders, David Edery and Daniel Cook, they took a cut in salary to buy back Spry Fox from Netflix and they increased the profit for their employees. I paid a higher price for the game than I could have because I wanted to give more to them (same with the other game I talked about yesterday, but I’m not talking about that game here because I have not played it yet).
I have a warm feeling playing this game. I’m eager to see where it’s going and if I’ll gel with any of the bears as much as I did with some of the NPCs in the last game. I’ll write more about it the further into the game I get. There have been a few QOL improvements, but there have also been some that I’m not as sanguine about. As to the latter, I’ll see if they change with a future patch.
*That’s an argument I’ve had several times–whether Miyazaki loved his players or hated them. I always maintained that he was indifferent to them. He just wanted to make the gorgeous, twisted worlds without any thought to the player.
**Which, by the way, misses the whole entire damn point. It’s the exploration and the grim fantasy that matter. Yes, there’s difficulty in From games, but that’s not the point.*** It feels almost incidental for most of the game. Like, yes it’s difficult and yes the worlds are intricate with no crossover.
***Well, mostly. Not going to get into that in this post because I’ve written about it ad nauseam in the past.
I am eagerly looking forward to two indie games. One was released yesterday, and one will be released today. The former is The Incident at Galley House (Willim Rous/Evil Trout Inc.), and the latter is Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). As I thought, I can not yet return to Schrödinger’s Call (Acrobatic Chirimenjako) because each chapter takes so much out of me.
I want to be clear that this is not a complaint–not at all. I am appreciative that this game is maknig me feel things. I just have to pace myself because I have a hunch it’s only going to get sadder from here on out. Sadder and weightier.
Let’s talk about the two games I mentioned in the first paragraph. The first is by the devs who did The Roottrees are Dead. I loved that game, and it made me feel clever. However, I did what I always do, which was to binge it until I finished it, and then I felt slightly sick. It was as if I had over-indulged. I went right into the DLC, but after about twenty minutes, I had to stop. It wasn’t the DLC; it was me. I had burned myself out on it, and I just could not do any more of it.
Hm. I might be able to go back to it now.
Anyway.
Their new game.
It’s not a new game, exactly. Last year, they had a text-based game called Type Help. I had heard of it, but I did not play it. People in the Discord who have played it were raving about it, but I’m just not big on text-based games. I love to read, but not when I’m trying to play a game. I don’t know why, but that’s just how it is.
This is…not the sequel to it, exactly. It’s an adaptation with a glow-up and some extra content, apparently. I don’t know much about it because I don’t watch trailers for games I know I’m going to play if the games are mysteries or need you to go in unspoiled. I had heard that this is definitely a game that you don’t want to know anything about before playing, much like The Roottrees are Dead was.
I know it’s a murder mystery. That’s all I know about it. The graphics are good from what I’ve seen–which again, isn’t much. I’m trying to avoid everything, and that means that I know very little about it. There are 59 reviews on Steam, and they are Very Positive. That’s the extent of what I know about the game.
As for the second game. I’m so excited about it, but I’m also apprehensive. Why? There are so many reasons. First of all, Spry Fox, the devs, were bought by Netflix (willingly, I hastily add) after the success of their first game, Cozy Grove. Which, by the way, is on my list of top five favorite non-From games of all time. I think I have it at fourth. It was my go-to game for so many days in a row, and after my medical crisis, it was one of my comfort games.
I’m back for the third and final post about the Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) demo. I want to talk about what I liked and didn’t like in the demo. I have said that the aesthetics are not my style, but they grew on me in game one. Let me rephrase that. The environments are vivid and the bears are cute; it’s mostly the player character that leaves me feeling a bit empty. I got used to it, though, anad I loved being able to dress them up as I wished. There were so many cute outfits, and I had to buy them all.
Here’s my post from yesterday about the basics of the first game and how the demo has differed so far. In this point, I’ll talk more about that and what I hope the sequel will have. And won’t have. Oh, and I’ve included the trailer from the original game below since I’ve included the trailer for this game in the last two posts.
I left off the last post by talking about how the quests seem much easier to finish in this game than the first, at least in the demo. I have mixed feelings about that because while it was frustrating in the first game to have to wait literal days to finish quests, I’m not sure I like finishing them in a matter of minutes, either. Then again, they may just be the first steps to a bigger and longer quest. I think I would be pleased if that was the case. I think that would be a good middle ground. Have some quests that can be finished in the current session and some that might have to wait until the next day.
Actually, that might have been how it was in the first game. It’s been some time since I’ve played it, so I’m not sure. It’s weird, though, because the ones you do in the moment seem to be too easy to finish. I will say I was frustrated by one thing. There’s a way to fix the bus, and you have to find several different parts. I could not find one part for the life of me, and I realized that it’s because they did not want you to find it in the demo. Or maybe not at all beacuse once the bus is fixed, presumably it can be driven. Though how it was drivin onto an island, I am unsure.
I hope that the cast of bears I have to help will be as memorable and endearing as they were in the first game. I’m a bit wary of the content creator bear, but I mean it is part of the current social landscape. Meaning, it’s a valid job, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t be represented in the game. And yet, I’m a bit wary because they are already doing the ‘like and subscribe’ vibe that is so off-putting to me. They, themselves, though are very sweet.
I like that in the first game and in this game so far, there are a wide variety of characters. It’s one thing I appreciate in cozy games–so many of the devs are deliberate about maknig their games inclusive. Not just racially, but sexual orientation, disabilities, gender identity, neuroatypicality, etc. Even religion has been touched upon in some games, as well as spirituality. Death is definetely dealt with, too–and in a sensitive manner.